


What They Deserve

by Pippin



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Gen, Letters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-10
Updated: 2016-12-10
Packaged: 2018-09-07 16:46:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8808373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pippin/pseuds/Pippin
Summary: If people get what they deserve, why I have won the Stanley?





	

**Author's Note:**

> I was stuck in my head and I relate really strongly to Kent, so I got some of that out by writing a letter from Kent to Jack.
> 
> There are references to Jack's OD and vague mentions of suicide in this.

They say that people get what they deserve, but I don’t believe that’s true.  If that was true, nothing bad would have ever happened to you.  You are so good, too good for someone like me to have ever even gotten to known, let alone be friends with.  Let alone have been something else with. 

If people truly get what they deserve, it should have been me on that bathroom floor, but, unlike you, I should never have woke up.  I’m not saying this for pity or for anyone to say it’s not true, that I’m a good person.  I know the truth.  I know what kind of person I am.  I know what they say about me.  “Fucking typical Aces hockey.”  I know what they mean by that.  “Fucking typical Kent Parson.”

God.

It was always that maybe if I play well enough they can ignore the truth about me.  Everything bad can be smothered by awards and wins and Stanley Cups.  But of course it doesn’t work that way. 

If people get what they deserve, why I have won the Stanley?

If people get what they deserve, why did I even get drafted at all, let alone as the first round pick?

Everything is finally going right for you.  You’re finally getting what you should have had all along.  You’re an NHL star.  You have a perfect boyfriend—god, could you have found anyone better?  He’s a hockey player, tiny, blond, adorable, a baker, everything that you deserve.  The only similarity between me and that kid is that we’re small and blond.  I still wish it was me, but I know that I don’t deserve you and that you deserve so, so much more than a fuck up kid from New York.

For a short while I thought that I must have done something right to get everything that was happening in my life.  You, winning, the Memorial Cup, the upcoming draft, everything.  And then I walked into our room and you were on the floor surrounded by the spilled remains of your pills and everything came crashing down.  The fantasy world I had been living in came crashing down and I saw exactly what I had done.

What happened to you was never your fault.  I watched you struggling and I pushed harder.  When they talk about addiction they talk about enablers.  That was always me.  I gave you alcohol, I let you take more and more pills—I encouraged you to take more and more pills—I pushed you to be the best. 

I’m everything that I was scared of becoming.

I know what I said to you that day at Samwell.  I said that you were scared that everyone would find out that you’re worthless.  God, I’m so sorry.  You’re not worthless.  You’ve never been worthless.  I said that because I was waiting for the other shoe to drop.  I’m the captain of a Stanley Cup-winning team, but that doesn’t mean anything.  I’m a disaster, toxic—I ruin everything I touch.  Like Midas, but instead of everything I touch turning to gold, it becomes poisoned.  I’m waiting for the Aces’ management to realize that, for the entire NHL to realize that, for me to lose everything that ever mattered to me.  Hockey is my life, but I don’t deserve it.

People get what they deserve—everything in your life is finally going right.

People get what they deserve—how long until the bottom falls out from under me?  How long until I lose everything? What will happen to me when it finally happens?

I’m not strong enough, I’m not good enough, I’m not enough full stop.

People get what they deserve.  And soon enough the universe is going to realize that I don’t deserve shit and pull it away.

I’m going to lose it all.  I deserve that.


End file.
